A judge today sentenced Jorge Miguel Gallegos, 38, of Santa Ana, to 40 years and eight months to life in state prison and a lifetime of having to register as a sex offender for raping an 8-year-old female relative on Christmas Eve while family members slept in other rooms.

Sleep for at least one was interrupted, however as Gallegos' wife walked in on the molestation that included oral copulation, rape and/or sodomy.

Around 11 p.m. on Dec. 24, 2009, Gallegos took the girl into his home's kitchen, which is where his wife walked in on the attack. Her husband then ripped the telephone from the wall and threatened his wife not to tell anyone about what happened. He later fled the home and stayed with a friend, while his wife called the Santa Ana Police Department. Gallegos was arrested in the early morning hours of Christmas Day.

A subsequent police investigation revealed that between September and December 2009, Gallegos sexually assaulted the 8-year-old in the same manner.

A jury on April 2 found Gallegos guilty of one felony count of sexual intercourse or sodomy with a child, two felony counts of oral copulation or sexual penetration with a child, and one felony count each of digital penetration of a child under 10, lewd acts on a child under 14, and dissuading a witness from reporting a crime:

Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before "graduating" to OC Weekly in 1995 as the paper's first calendar editor. He has contributed as a freelance editor and writer to several publications and been the subject of or featured in several reports online, in print and on the radio and television. One of countless times he returned to his Costa Mesa, CA, home with a bounty of awards from a journalism competition, his wife told him to take out the trash.